“Sir, I will gather what intelligence I can, but the goal of this mission
is
to destroy Nashira.”
“I am revising that goal. For our own national security, we must recover the L-AI. Your orders are to hold the site, allow no one to enter pending the arrival—”
I drop out of gen-com.
Back in the hospital in Budapest, Issam tried to explain to me about the L-AIs.
They’re like the microbeads in your brain. They can change the personality and affect the goals of the Red.
Of course Abajian wants to capture Nashira and take control of that technology, because if you can manipulate the Red, eventually you’ll own the world.
Leonid was right. I should have done the mission myself.
Another mistake, but it’s not too late. I grasp the grandly exaggerated rectangle of the door handle.
“Be cautious, Shelley,” Leonid growls.
There is no time for caution. Already I hear the background growl of a small fleet of helicopters flying in from the gulf. I wonder if the Iraqi Army will object to this incursion . . . but Abajian would have taken care of that contingency. He will have already cut a deal.
I pull the door open. It’s not locked. I knew it wouldn’t be.
Inside, it’s dark. I can see out through the window wall to the courtyard, but inside, the only thing I can see is the glimmering of the blood road. I can’t hear anything either, not even the hum of appliances, and there’s a stale
smell to the air the way a closed room gets when the air-conditioning is off.
I get out the digital night vision glasses Leonid gave me and put them on. They reveal a dragon’s living room: couches and chairs, side tables and flower arrangements. “Whoever was here, I think they pulled out as soon as they got word of our raid.”
Leonid looks around through his own D-NVGs. “Yes. It feels empty.”
Standard procedure would be to clear this floor before doing anything else, but there’s no time. So I go where I’m directed, across the living room to a wide flight of stairs, open on both sides, that climbs to the second floor. Leonid can’t see the blood road, so he follows me.
We’re ascending the stairs when I get a link request. “
Karin Larsen
,” my overlay’s voice announces.
“Papa, I’m going to pick up an outside link.”
“Who?”
“Delphi.” I link in. “Is Abajian standing over your shoulder?”
She sounds frightened: “No. I’m outside. Let me see what you see.”
I trust Delphi. So I link her my video feed.
She doesn’t say anything as she studies the terrain, though I can hear her nervous breathing. There is a sitting room at the top of the stairs, and doors that probably open onto bedrooms and playrooms, but the air here is as stale as it is downstairs; the house is silent.
I turn to climb the next flight of stairs, which rises in the opposite direction, with the window wall on one side. Leonid follows, several steps behind.
“How do you know where to go?” Delphi asks.
“It’s a projected path.”
“Do you have a seeker?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
Delphi rarely uses profanity.
“I need more data,” she whispers. “I feel like I’ve lost half my senses.”
“Yeah.”
An LCS helmet can detect EM fields and filter faint audio signals. A seeker can detect the chemical signature of explosives, and of course we could send it ahead to collect an advance view of what we’re facing—but we have to get by without any of that. There aren’t even muzzle cams on the Lasher I’m carrying.
“I want you to slow down,” she says.
“We don’t have time. I need to know what’s here.”
The third floor is different from the other two because it’s only a partial floor. The curved window wall is met by a wall of flat glass with a sliding door that opens onto a rooftop deck painted with lines that mark it as a helipad. There are no furnishings, just a smooth marble floor. I cross the floor to the window wall. Look three stories down to the courtyard where the gate stands open to the driveway. I can’t see the squad from here, but I know they’re just a few minutes away.
“Turn around,” Delphi says. “Let me see what’s behind you.”
I do.
A rail encloses the stairwell. Beyond the rail is a concrete wall with a steel door. The blood road leads right up to that door. I sure as fuck hope it’s got an electronic lock and that the Red has hacked it, because otherwise it’s going to take all of the C-4 I’m carrying just to blow that door open.
“That’s where I’m going,” I tell Delphi. And to Leonid I say, “Through that door.”
He moves toward it, but I put a hand out to stop him. “Let me go first.”
“
Wait
,” Delphi says. “Both of you. Let’s think about this for a minute—”
“We don’t have a minute.”
“—because something else is going on.”
Leonid moves to the glass wall that looks out on the helipad. “Black Hawks are four minutes away, no more.”
“Delphi, we need to move now. I know the setup feels wrong, but that’s because it’s easy. And it’s easy because the mission was set up for me: get in, set the charges, check for any obvious intelligence assets, and then get out. I need to get it done before those Black Hawks get here.”
“But that was
not
your assignment,” she argues. “You were supposed to come here alone. No weapons, no explosives. Let’s say it happened that way. What could you have done?”
“I was probably supposed to pick up explosives on the way.”
“That’s tenuous. You can’t assume it. I’ve seen the order. Major Kanoa showed it to me. You were to destroy Nashira. Not locate it, or document it, or collect intelligence. Simply destroy it. How? How, if you were here alone? What would you do? What
could
you do?”
I glance at angel sight. It shows me the squad already at the lower gate. They’re not even maintaining interval, while the rumble of the Black Hawks has grown audible even past the heavy glass. What could I have done? I put myself in that alternate timeline and the answer is easy:
Only what I am doing.
“I have to go in that room to find out,” I tell her. “All I know is that the Red would not have sent me here unless . . .”
I catch myself as I recognize the fallacy in my own thinking. “Ah,
shit
, Delphi—unless a means to accomplish the
mission was already in place. Papa!” He’s eyeing me with a tense expression. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
“What have you found?”
“This place is booby-trapped. It has to be.”
We
always
assume booby traps when we find sites abandoned by the enemy, but I didn’t think about it at all this time because I knew the Red had prepared the way; it saved my life at the canal so it could lead me here; the blood road gleamed under my feet; I am a soldier of the Red and we are on the same fucking side.
But in the calculations of the Red, the success of this mission must count for more than my survival.
Never trust the Red.
“Get
out
,” Delphi says.
But Leonid wants to know more. “Do you see a wire?”
“No. It’ll be on the other side of that door. Or the trigger could be a motion sensor.”
“If it was a motion sensor, we would have set it off.” He walks toward the steel door.
“Goddamn it, Papa!” I can’t help myself. I back away until I’m against the window wall. I bump up against it and motion catches my eye. I glance down to see Abajian’s hellhound, trotting in past the gate. “Delphi, can that thing get in here?”
“No. It can’t pull the front door open.”
Leonid has reached the steel door. He crouches to study the latch. Then he looks over his shoulder at me. “You are right. Come. Record this. And the next time you trust the will of your god, remember this moment.”
“Don’t do it,” Delphi says. “Just get downstairs and get out.”
I want to get out. My heart is hammering. I’m breathing hard. But I tell myself,
Lock it down
, and I do what Leonid says. I cross the room to the steel door and record the glint
of a freshly cut wire just visible twelve inches below the latch, light green in night vision. “Delphi, send that to Abajian.” His people will be here soon. They need to know the risk.
“Roger that. Now
get out
!”
It’s like Leonid hears her. He’s made his point. Now we move together back toward the front of the room. But while Leonid turns to head down the stairs, I detour to the window, worried about the hellhound, which Abajian’s people control.
“What are you doing, Shelley?” Delphi pleads. “Get downstairs.”
“Where’s the hellhound?”
While I wait for her to answer, I fish out the second round of pills Leonid gave me. I got a feeling, a bad feeling, so I dry-swallow them, just in case.
Delphi comes back after half a minute, sounding puzzled. “I don’t know where it is. Just go.”
Out past the open courtyard gate, I see Jaynie coming up the driveway, with Logan fifteen meters behind her. I log back into gen-com. The squad map confirms Fadul and Tran close behind.
Logan sees my icon and pulls up. “Shelley, sitrep!” he demands as Fadul, and then Tran, bunch up behind him. “Where the hell did you go?”
“Stay where you are,” I tell them in my whispery voice. “Everyone, stay put. Do not proceed.” Jaynie is well ahead of them now, but she stops just outside the gate. I say, “There’s a tripwire set to go off when the vault door is opened. Destroy Nashira, right? That was the order. I was supposed to open that door.”
“Ah,
shit
,” Logan says.
“Abajian can have whatever is in there,” I tell them, “because we are not suicide jihadi.”
I turn to follow Leonid down the stairs—but Fadul’s voice stops me: “Find another way to get it done, Shelley.” It’s a soft-spoken threat that makes me look outside again. She’s still holding her position behind Logan, but Jaynie has started to advance.
“Jaynie! Stay where you are. That is an order.”
Jaynie ignores me. She slips past the gate, while Fadul argues. “We have a mission, Captain.”
“The mission is bullshit.”
“That’s not your call.” She tries to step past Logan. He gets in her way.
“Stand down, Fadul,” he warns.
Fadul says, “Looks like Vasquez has her own mission.”
It does look that way. Jaynie is moving swiftly across the courtyard, passing the SUV, heading for the front door.
“Shit, get down!” Fadul shouts. Tran dives for the ground, while Fadul drops to one knee, bringing her HITR to her shoulder.
“Fadul, no!” I plead, sure that she’s targeting Jaynie. But I’m wrong.
Fadul fires her HITR simultaneously with a muzzle flash that blazes from beneath the SUV. The fucking hellhound must be under there. It has to be. Lying in wait beneath the vehicle, out of angel sight because Abajian has decided we are the enemy and he’s launched an ambush of my squad.
Jaynie breaks her silence. “Who is running that thing?” she yells over gen-com. “Shut it down! Shut it down!”
It’s Fadul who shuts it down. Abajian’s hellhound gets off only six rounds before she sends two grenades rocketing in under the SUV. The double blast bucks the vehicle and shoots a 360-degree circle of flame out from under it.
I check Jaynie’s icon. She must have found cover from the shrapnel, because she’s still green. But Logan is hit. I
see him on the ground, while in my overlay, his icon goes yellow, then red. Tran scrambles to his side, his pack already halfway off so he can get to his first aid kit.
The rumble of the Black Hawks jumps to a higher decibel as someone opens the front door. At first, I think Jaynie has come inside. But then I see Leonid leaving the house. He circles wide around the burning SUV and then takes off across the courtyard in his fast, lumbering stride, heading for the gate, shouting at Tran to get the first aid kit ready.
“Kanoa!” With my ruined voice, it’s just an urgent whisper. “Who gave the order for the hellhound to shoot? Was it Abajian?”
Kanoa doesn’t answer.
Delphi says, “Abajian must have locked him out. What you need to do is get out of that house.”
“No. I need to know if Abajian is planning to gun us down when those Black Hawks get here.”
Her voice is trembling when she answers. “I’m going back inside. See what I can do.”
Our link closes.
Outside, Tran starts working on Logan, while Fadul heads alone for the courtyard.
“Fadul,” I tell her, “stay with Tran. Don’t make yourself a target by coming in here.”
“Can’t do it, Shelley.”
Leonid has made it across the courtyard. He intercepts her at the gate, grabs her arm strut, says something to her off-com. She jerks her arm away, but she half turns to watch him as he moves on to crouch beside Logan, lending what help he can while Tran tries to staunch the bleeding.
For a few seconds, I let myself hope that she’ll go back to help—but that’s not in the program. She passes the gate.
“Fadul!” Jaynie barks over gen-com. “You will stand down. Go back outside the gate and stay there.”
Fadul hesitates, taking a cautious look around the courtyard. “Abajian give you special orders, Vasquez?” she asks. “You supposed to gun me down next?”
“That wasn’t my call,” Jaynie answers. “And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you either, sister. I respect you. But you need to stay out of my way.”
I hear in these words the same hell-bound determination that was in my own voice when I asked Leonid,
Who said I’m not willing?
I can’t doubt it anymore. Fadul is operating and she will do what it takes to carry out the mission.
I turn and bolt for the stairs. I’ve got no plan in mind, but the pills are kicking in and I tell myself there has to be a way to keep Fadul from killing herself or killing Jaynie—but then Fadul shouts a warning that freezes me at the top of the stairs. “Heads up, Shelley! Vasquez is coming after you.”
No real allies, I think. No fixed enemies.
The rumble of the Black Hawks is mixed with a roar of fire from the burning SUV, white noise that doesn’t quite cover the urgent footfalls of a dead sister racing up the stairs.